Cannes Classics Title ‘The Churning’: Inside the Restoration of 1976 Indian Masterpiece

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran The restored version of Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal’s 1976 masterpiece “Manthan” (“The Churning”) is screening at the Cannes Film Festival‘s Cannes Classics strand.

Shot by DoP Govind Nihalani in rural Gujarat, western India, the film is produced by 500,000 farmers who contributed towards its making, under the banner Gujarat Milk Co-Op Marketing Federation Ltd.

The film is a fictionalized version of the beginnings of the dairy cooperative movement that transformed India from a milk-deficient nation to the world’s largest milk producer, inspired by Dr.

Verghese Kurien. It also examines issues like caste, class, gender and economic discrimination. The cast includes Girish Karnad, Smita Patil, Anant Nag, Mohan Agashe and Naseeruddin Shah. “The first thing we did was speak to the Gujarat Milk Co-Op Marketing Federation, and we had to make them understand that the film needs to be on 4K, we need to project it back on screen and we need to restore this film because they said it’s on YouTube, you can just watch it anytime you like.